After a decade, the QLine is about to become a reality

Before Friday morning, the last time I had ridden a train — not counting the no-frills terminal tram at Detroit Metro — it was a grueling overnight journey three years ago from Bangkok's Hualamphong Station to rural Surat Thani more than 400 miles away in the south of Thailand — amid a military coup that had toppled the government and put tanks on the streets.

One could make the same Bangkok-Surat Thani trip in an hour by plane, but we were looking for adventure. Thailand! Tanks! Trains!

The austere Surat Thani train station was built in 1954 to replace a 1915 facility that had been destroyed by American bombers while the Japanese used it as a military base during World War II.

Two years after that station opened, nearly 9,000 miles away in Detroit, the city's streetcar service ground to a halt. It was April 1956, and Detroit's streetcars were mothballed (and later sold) in favor of buses. Passenger trains still ran to the city, but the streetcar had been a primary mode of transit for city residents.

Sixty-one years later, the streetcars are back in Detroit. On Friday, I took part in media ride on a QLine streetcar for the first time. If you've ever ridden a streetcar, trolley, light rail, etc. ... it's largely the same. A smooth, mostly quiet ride down the city's main artery. It certainly was vastly more comfortable than my rattle-trap train in Thailand.

For me, the 6.6-mile loop was a professional milestone. I was the first reporter to break the news that a serious effort was underway to create a streetcar system in Detroit. The first edition of Crain's to carry a story about the ""Woodward Transit Catalyst Project" was Feb. 25, 2008. I'd heard rumblings before that about the plan, but it took awhile to cobble together something solid — and then I finally got my hands on the 2007 study by the University of Detroit Mercy that outlined the basics of the streetcar we'll see begin formal service next Friday.

In the ensuing years, I wrote untold thousands of words about the project, long known as M-1 Rail and then the QLine. I reported on its financing, debates about its configuration, the politics and bureaucracy of building a transit system, and its death and rebirth.

There were times when I doubted it would ever become a reality. The city was a financial mess, and tried to absorb M-1 Rail as part of a larger public rail project. Then Detroit ran out of money, fell under state control, and declared bankruptcy. One financial backer, General Motors, also went bankrupt and had to reorganize. One mayor went to prison, and three others eventually came and went. The nation fell into recession. Eventually, the federal government, state, and city tried to kill M-1 in favor of bus rapid transit.

The project's backers persevered. Eventually, they pulled it off. No matter what you think of the QLine, it's been a survivor. It just took a decade.

Supporters say the streetcar is more evidence of the city's recovery and it will fuel more investment and development. Critics say it's a boondoggle that further enriches Detroit's oligarchs at the expense of true commuter transit, nothing more than Detroit People Mover 2.0.

It's not my job to defend the QLine, but I will say that its backers never claimed it was mass transit or a commuter line. They called it a demonstration of how the public and private sectors could work together on transportation projects, and that the line was intended to be one piece of a much larger regional transit network that others would have to lead and fund. It was intended, like the People Mover was meant to be, as a part of something bigger and broader. It's a piece that fits in with the buses, Amtrak, and eventually whatever regional system is developed.

That strikes me as reasonable.

Will QLine be a success? Too soon to say. I suspect it will take suburban visitors, especially for Tigers and Lions games, awhile to make the QLine a part of their plans. My guess is that when Little Caesars Arena opens in September, ridership will get a boost. People who live and work along Woodward should find it handy for getting food and shopping. Efficiency and safety will determine its success.

That leads to the natural question about expansion. Can it eventually run to Royal Oak or even Pontiac along Woodward? Can spur lines ferry people into Greektown and Corktown? Could major arteries be added to tap into dense downtown population areas such as along Jefferson Avenue and the waterfront? Can Detroiters in the farther neighborhoods, often left behind in the city's rebirth, expect to one day see streetcar stations?

Maybe, but someone has to emerge as a leader to champion those efforts. Roger Penske captained the QLine from the beginning, tapped by then-transit czar John Hertel to bring together the personalities and checkbooks that could make a streetcar happen. But Penske cannot be expected to do it again. And the money for expansion, especially to run tracks deep into the neighborhoods and suburbs and along major routes like Jefferson, Gratiot, and Michigan avenues, could run into the hundreds of millions. Government will have to foot the bill, and that's a complex fever swamp of politics where the urge to kill projects often is greater than the desire to bring them to reality.